Being Frank by Donna Earnhardt & Andrea Castellani

Being Frank is the story of what happens when a person blurts out whatever is on his or her mind, for better or worse.  

Frank's motto is, "Honesty is the best policy." But, he's a little too frank when he speaks.  He tells people exactly what he thinks -- and his honesty is getting him into trouble.  He tells his mother she's wrinkled, describes a friend's freckles in a way that offends her and tells another girl her singing voice is screechy.

Pretty soon, Frank has made nearly everyone around him angry (except for the police officers, with whom he's shared the fact that his mother was driving too fast).  Frank asks his grandfather for help and learns how to be honest in a positive way.

You can actually see the entire book online: Being Frank at the Flashlight Press website. Just click on the image of Being Frank (or the words "Look Inside") and a PDF version will pop up.  

I love this story.  It is colorful, funny and provides a nice object lesson.  I found myself smiling as I read the book, which is pretty much a guarantee that a book is going to be a favorite.  The quality of books published by Flashlight Press is always consistently top-notch, as well.  There's a nice, shiny cover that exactly matches the slipcover.  With children's books, I prefer to remove the cover while reading and then replace it when I put the book back on the shelf.  And, they do often get torn to pieces, so you have to appreciate it when a wrecked jacket won't mean a less attractive book.  Highly recommended.

In other news:

Our sofa arrives tomorrow!!  Excitement!

Book news:

I received a package of 4 Christmas books from Sterling Kids and The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories 2  from Harper It on Monday evening.  Since I promptly sat down and read them all, I've just thrown myself even further behind on reviews.  I'll keep on cranking them out, as fast as I can!

Both of my current reads ended up getting ditched, last night.  How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard is funny at times, but it's a bit dry.  Still, I thought I'd read it because it's a F2F group selection.  Unfortunately, the book contains spoilers.  I have not yet read The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, but I have a copy and I also have a pretty decent memory so I wasn't thrilled when Bayard went into great gasping detail, explaining the entire plot and how the main character managed to deduce the content of a mysterious book and solve a murder without having read the book in question.  But, I kept going . . . until it seemed he was about to do the same thing to Graham Greene's The Third Man.  Well, that did it.  I've been planning to read The Third Man soon (assuming I can find my copy) and I really am not a skimmer, so I wasn't willing to keep going and just tossed the book aside.

Unfortunately, I also managed to miss my F2F meeting.  I was too tired to drive the 30 miles.  Bummer.  But, I had a fun evening photographing cats in Christmas bows.

The White Forest by Adam McOmber also went on the DNF pile, although I'll give it a second shot.  I have read only a single chapter per night and it's a book that demands fuller attention than I'm able to give it at the moment.  What little I read (about 6 chapters) was interesting, though.  Weird, but interesting.

I'm now reading Outside In by Maria V. Snyder and Underground by Haruki Murakami.

That's all for now!  Happy middle-of-the-week!  Wahoo!

©2012 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Tuesday Twaddle

I just had an epiphany, this week.  When I mention books that have "walked in" (aka, arrivals), it never occurs to me to mention e-books.  I purchased one e-book and downloaded one for tour, but I probably will continue to forget to mention them because you can't stack e-books in a convenient location to remind yourself what you acquired.  This week, I will definitely mention them.

New arrivals, the past week:

Lola's Secret by Monica McInerney - e-book for TLC tour, requested because it's a Christmas book and I'm reading as many as I can to help me come up with decent suggestions for my F2F group's December meeting.
Jamie Oliver's Great Britain by Jamie Oliver - also for TLC tour
When It Happens to You by Molly Ringwald - from Harper It for review
Among the Missing by Dan Chaon - purchased at my local secondhand bookstore . . . which, unfortunately, was a pretty big disappointment, otherwise.
Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn - e-book purchased because I felt like a quick, creepy read.
11/22/63 by Stephen King - an impulse purchase

General Twaddle About My Week:

• This week I discovered I was definitely not meant to be a librarian.  I've been shelving my books by category, as we unpack.  I've got at least the following categories and then some:  YA, history, historical fiction, WWII (both NF and F, mixed together), short stories, poetry, classics, sci-fi, science, travel and travel memoirs (but I have an entire separate shelf dedicated to books about France and/or set in Paris and an entire shelf of memoirs), psychology, law, Christian/inspirational/spiritual, writing, literature studies, writing reference, books about reading or with bookish subject matter, "potentially fluffy" and "I'm not sure how to categorize this".  
• We don't necessarily have to go to the big city to do city-related errands.  There is a tiny town we can go to, instead. I drove there to do some banking and scout out the courthouse, this week.  I'm familiar with the town but I hadn't paid much attention to the courthouse.  It's beautiful!  You can park to the side, where there is a row of towering pecan trees and an iron fence covered in lichen.  
• It is acting like autumn, although our leaves are not yet turning.  We're enjoying the cool air and have begun taking daily walks through our neighborhood.  It's truly exciting to finally live in a subdivision with sidewalks in a city with leash laws that are enforced!
• The photo of squash at the top of this post was taken at a produce stand we love.  We've only been there a few times, in the past, but it's been a favorite place since we discovered it on the way to a swim meet.  We're thrilled to be 30 miles closer to one of our old favorite haunts!

Random conversation with husband:

Me:  "I was thinking maybe we could make a pumpkin man.  You know, like a snowman but with 3 pumpkins stacked on top of each other, instead of balls of snow?"
Husband:  "Nancy, this is a nice neighborhood."
Me:  "But, we don't have snow, so . . ."
Husband:  ". . . "

Reading update:

I have been an ADD reader, this week.  I set aside the books I was reading last week and started 11/22/63 practically the moment I brought it home.  But, I haven't gotten far because I keep picking up other books.  I read the first story in Miracle and Other Stories by Connie Willis, this weekend (loved it).  And, then I downloaded my creepy e-book, Wait Till Helen Comes, and read that at once.  I finished Lola's Secret (a November tour book) and read maybe 25 pages of Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure.  I can't remember if I finished The Lifeboat this past week or the week before, but it kept my attention long enough to complete.  That's saying something, I suppose.  I also read Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory.

Blogging:

I've been bad, haven't I?


©2012 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Well . . . that was what I call a break

I'll update my sidebar in a bit, but I just wanted to drop in to say, "Hello! I'm alive!" I'm still going to be on limited-blogging status for as long as it takes to get my house in order and all that fun stuff (that could be eons) but I'm at least back to reading.

While I was away, I hardly read a thing -- literally, did not finish a book for almost 3 weeks. It was distressing. But, on the other hand, I had good reason in that for a good portion of the time I've been gone I was losing my mind over packing all the proper things and then for much of the rest I was hanging out here:

Huzzybuns and I went to Japan! We got to hang out with the charming Nat of In Spring it is the Dawn (and her delightful husband, H., the one day he was available). And, then we came home and one of us basically slept for a week. Can I just say Nat is (besides an excellent guide and lovely lady) a person with great stamina?

We had such fun. We ate a lot of terrific food. This is one of my favorite dishes. Anyone care to hazard a guess? Eel soup! Seriously, I love eel.

Anyway, we had a blast and now it's back to cleaning, purging and National Novel Writing Month. Unfortunately, I started out NaNoWriMo with a bang and then . . . you know . . . basically slept for a week. So, I was ahead but now if I continue at my current rate, NaNo is telling me I'll finish my novel by Christmas. Haha. I love it. I plan to get back on the proverbial horse, today.

The one book I managed to finish whilst on break was Philippa Fisher's Fairy Godsister by Liz Kessler, a Kindle freebie that I chose because it was easy reading and I was dead on my feet. We had pretty full days in Japan. I didn't finish it till a couple days after we returned.

However, today I just finished my second book since my arrival home: Remembering You by Tricia Goyer. And, I'm back to reading Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin ("back," although I did manage to read a handful of pages while we were in Kyoto) and Emory's Gift by W. Bruce Cameron (which I'd barely begun before we left, so I restarted the book -- and am currently on page 71). I'm also reading The Wind is My Mother by Bear Heart and enjoying it immensely. TWiMM is a book by a "Native American shaman" from Oklahoma and, at one point, I had to set it aside briefly to let myself wallow in homesickness. But, I got over myself and actually used one of his healing techniques to make my husband's achy shoulder feel better when it was keeping him awake.

So . . . that's everything I'm currently reading. I'll get back to Drama by John Lithgow soon, as well. Drama is a very enjoyable read by a stunningly down-to-earth actor. I think you'll like it if you're a fan of memoirs by the famous (I am normally not, but I have another one on the stacks, here, and I have a poetry book by Lithgow that I've only partially read -- enough that I already knew he was a decent writer and pretty much lacking in the usual arrogance, by the point at which Drama was offered to me).

My bottom-line assessment of Japan: Totally freaking awesome.

Would I go again? I would not have left, if there'd been an option to stay.

The People: Love 'em. So polite. You pick up on the bowing thing pretty quickly, but I only learned how to say, "I'm sorry" or "Excuse me" (kind of a general-purpose word, I think: "sumimasen") so I would definitely purchase a phrase book before returning.

Did I miss reading? Oh, yes. It was horrible not feeling like reading, but I just had no interest in reading at all! Weird.

And, yet, I managed to get zen for a time . . .

I missed my kitties but they were well cared-for by my son's lovely girlfriend, so we returned to relative calm in spite of our lengthy absence.

Since I'm working on writing a hasty novel, I can't say how often I'll check in during the month of November, but I'll be back whenever I can squeeze in the time.

What did I miss in Blogland, while I was away? Anything marvelous? Any flaming controversy? I hope you had a great time, too! Read anything wonderful?

©2011 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Comment FAIL

The image doesn't fit the problem, but I thought it was too cute to pass up. I found it here. I'm having a technical issue. Since I'm more than a little tech-stupid and my son recently told me I need to defrag (I am fragged . . . so sad), I'm hoping I just need to do some tidying in order to solve the problem. In the meantime, I'm unable to comment at a startling number of Blogger blogs -- specifically Blogger, not Wordpress or LiveJournal, etc., near as I can tell. Till I get the problem figured out, my apologies for my inability to comment. Doggone it. I need to communicate. Back soon . . .

I'm back!!! Miss me?

I'm home! And, man, am I glad to be back. Dealing with my sister was a bit like this, unfortunately:

I'm the meek one defending herself on the bottom, there. But, I sneaked in some decent reading time between cleaning and boxing, watched loads of Gomer Pyle and a few movies, enjoyed viewing the wildlife that flitted past my mother's bay window and had quite a few nice walks around the old neighborhood. I'm still reading the two books I mentioned in my last post, At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon and Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald -- almost finished with Human Voices. I believe I'll go backward on reviews, once I've got my equilibrium back. I brought home a nice little pile of books and will try to photograph some for future posts.

For the return drive from Oklahoma, I purchased an audio to help pass the time: Journey to the Center of the Earth (unabridged) by Jules Verne. I like Jules Verne but the scientific portions of his books can be rather dry, so I chose that audio based primarily on the description of the reader. And, wow, good choice. I will look for more audio books read by Simon Prebble for future drives. I didn't realize there was a new movie version of this one till I saw the rocking fine cover with Brendan Fraser looking all manly and gorgeous. This is the photo on the cover, although I can only find an image of the soundtrack, not the audio book:

Admittedly, that terrific cover grabbed me like crazy.

I'm just beginning to blog-hop and wow, you guys have been posting like crazy! It's really thrilling to be back to visiting blogs (and to not have to order food or drinks for internet time, although I must add that the Burger King staff in Ponca City, OK is an extraordinarily friendly and courteous bunch). A mere two books arrived while I was away:

Entropy by Anthony Lawrence Gordon and
Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt by Nick Hornby

I'll dive into Entropy, as soon as I finish Human Voices. Hope everyone is having a fabulous summer!

Bookfool, extremely happy to be home